


the primary source (is wrong, of course)

by rosestone



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, In-Universe RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:40:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23763235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosestone/pseuds/rosestone
Summary: "Are you seriously saying there's - not justonenovel fictionalising Harry's childhood, but multiple ones?""Hermione," Ron said, putting a hand on her shoulder and looking seriously into her eyes, "it's practically an industry."Or: the one where Harry has a plan, Hermione learns something terrible, Ron makes a confession, and the Potter Adventure genre turns out to have a surprisingly bad take on Harry's characterisation.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 66
Collections: What Fen Do (Instead of Going Outside), When Death Loves Flamingos





	1. if your submission wasn't accepted, try subtracting characterisation and logic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [primeideal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/primeideal/gifts).



Harry was sprawled dramatically over an armchair in the Gryffindor common room, one arm flung over his face and the other drooping to the floor, when Ron and Hermione found him.

"Is something wrong?" Hermione asked. "You were going to meet us in the library to study. Remember?"

"You left me alone with her to study, Harry. On a _Saturday_."

"It's OWL year, Ronald. You will take your study schedule, and you will like it. Which, incidentally, you ought to be doing too, Harry - I know it's still relatively early in the year, but I think the teachers have made their expectations quite obvious. This isn't the year to let homework creep up on you."

Ron poked him in the shoulder. "Harry? You're not really sleeping like that, are you? Or - you didn't get another detention with Umbridge?"

"No." He lifted the arm over his face slightly, staring out at them with a gloomy expression on his face. "I had a plan. A fantastic plan. And it's _ruined_."

"What plan?" Hermione said, a wary note in her voice.

"Ugh."

"Harry. What plan."

He sighed. "I wrote a book."

Hermione and Ron met each other's eyes. After a few moments, Ron winced and looked away.

"Mate, you aren't making any sense. Why was writing a book a plan? Were you trying to tell people Umbridge is horrible? Because I'm pretty sure the Ministry knows - honestly, I reckon they're pretty glad to be shot of her for a year. And when'd you have _time_ to write a book?"

"I got bored over the summer," he said. "And then with everything that's going on, I figured maybe I should try to finish it. I know it might not have ended up making a lot of money, but even if I only got a bit it'd be useful, right? I figured we could use it to get proper Defence books for everyone. Or maybe at the Ministry. Lucius Malfoy bribes people to get what he wants, right?"

Hermione pinched the bridge of her nose. "Are you saying you want to try to bribe the Minister to remove Umbridge? Really?"

"Maybe?"

"It wouldn't work, mate," Ron said. "Fudge wouldn't go for it, not now."

"It could! Maybe!"

"Leaving that aside," Hermione said, shaking her head, "you said you wrote a book? What about? Was it an autobiography? Because that really seems like it might make things worse. Can you imagine what Snape would say if he thought you were trying to make yourself _more_ famous?"

Ron let out a choked noise.

"Yes. It'd be _hilarious_. But I didn't actually put my name on it, I - actually, here." Harry fished through his bag, coming out with a pile of parchment. "I couldn't work out how to make it a real book, so I just magiced the edges together."

Hermione took it, frowning. " _Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone_. It's... an autobiography, but only about your first year?"

"No, it's like those kids' books. You know, _Harry Potter and the Evil Swiss Watch_ , all that rubbish?"

"I. No. No, I don't think I've seen those."

"Probably too busy with all the other books," Ron said, nodding. "They're novels, Hermione."

"I've been in the fiction section in Flourish and Blotts! I got this mystery - I thought it'd be interesting to see how different it was to Muggle fiction, you know. It was... not particularly well written. And the second one I tried was plagiarised from Arthur Conan Doyle, but with random references to magic shoved in wherever it - well, it'd be inaccurate to say _wherever it fit_ , because frankly it didn't. After that I just went back to reading Muggle fiction."

"Yeah, but you weren't looking at the kids' stuff, right?" Ron said. "That's where they are. They're basically a bunch of books by different people about what Harry might've been doing after You-Know-Who got blasted, only it's all the kind of thing kids would think was cool instead of what was actually happening - none of them ever said he was off with his Muggle relatives, and, I dunno, driving around in cars?"

"Or going to school, or dealing with Dudley," Harry said, folding his arms. "It's all rubbish about how I'd defeated another fifteen Dark Lords by the age of eight using the power of friendship and also secret family magic my Dad left me, and also a phoenix."

"Don't forget the one where you were actually King Arthur," Ron said cheerfully. "Actually - I always wondered, do Muggles have stories about him? Because, y'know, the magical ones are mostly about Merlin, the whole thing with book-Harry having secret King Arthur powers instead of, I dunno, inheriting Merlin's staff or something always seemed weird to me."

"Yes," Hermione said, blinking. "Yes, he's rather more important than Merlin in the Muggle stories."

"Huh. Guess it wasn't a pureblood wrote those ones, then."

"Are you seriously saying there's - not just _one_ novel fictionalising Harry's childhood, but multiple ones?"

"Hermione," Ron said, putting a hand on her shoulder and looking seriously into her eyes, "it's practically an industry."

"What?"

"D'you know how many second-hand copies Ginny managed to track down as a kid?"

"What?" Harry echoed.

"Don't worry, Mum made sure we all knew the authors were making it up. She said they just slapped your name on them 'cause people'd think it was more believable that someone who'd already done something impossible would keep on doing things kids shouldn't've been able to do, plus there wasn't anybody to make them stop. But Ginny still collected them. Really, looking back, most of them weren't written that well, but they were sort of... compelling. The kind of thing where you just had to find out what happened next, right?"

"I cannot believe you read children's adventure novels about our best friend," Hermione said, shaking her head.

"Oi, it's not like I bought them! Sometimes I just got bored, and there they were on the bookshelf."

"I cannot believe you've never _mentioned_ this before."

"Me neither, actually," Harry said. "You never thought you should say anything?"

"Well, it's not like they were really about you, right? It's more like I read books about some other kid who happened to have the same name as you. And anyway, it would've been weird."

"That doesn't help! Or make it any less weird _now!_ "

"I can't think about this," Hermione said, sinking onto a couch. "I cannot. No. Harry, _please_ tell me more about your book."

"Um. Okay. So, it's, uh, it's about the whole thing with Quirrell. Only I took out bits I thought'd embarrass people. And then added other bits in, because it's supposed to be fiction-ish, right?"

"What bits?" Hermione said, resignation in her voice.

"You punched Malfoy twice."

She blinked. "Really?"

"It was too cool to wait until third year."

"I only hit him once," she said, lips twitching. "And technically I only slapped him."

"It's cooler this way, though," Ron said. "If you try sending it to another publisher, I reckon you should put more punches in."

"I didn't want to overdo it in the first book." Harry slumped in his chair. "Assuming there's ever more than one."

Hermione settled herself on the armchair opposite his, leaning forwards. "Did they say why they rejected it?"

"They said I didn't have a good enough grasp of my character! _My_ character! If anyone ought to have a good grasp of what I'm like, it'd be me, right? What do they think they're on about?"

"Did you put your name on the letter?" Hermione asked.

"Well. No. But all the same - how do they think they know who I am? It's not like I've met any of these people!"

"Did they say anything else about it? Actually, do you have the letter they sent?"

Harry shoved the crumpled parchment at her, slumping even further. It would be inaccurate, at this point, to say he was sitting in his chair; more that he was lying on it, and the floor, simultaneously.

Hermione pursed her lips. "Hmm. I suppose I can see their point about the pacing - assuming you left everything happening at about the same time it really did, it'd probably feel too slow for an actual novel."

"It's based off reality!"

"Reality isn't usually as interesting as fiction is, Harry. And - well, think of Lockhart. I can't imagine he wrote everything exactly as it happened in real life, even leaving aside the Obliviation and fraud."

"I'd really rather not take tips from _him_." Harry scowled at her.

She shrugged. "Is he an awful person? Yes. Did he do horrible things? Also yes. Would I have preferred he'd never come to Hogwarts? Definitely yes. But you have to admit he has a talent for writing. It wouldn't have mattered how many people's memories he'd stolen if he hadn't been able to write books that people found interesting and then promote them aggressively enough to end up famous."

"I guess? But it's not like I could ask him for tips, anyway. Even if I wanted to. Which I don't."

"We're getting off the point," Ron said, shaking his head. "D'you really want to publish a book about yourself? Not just to annoy people?"

Harry shrugged. "I... Okay, sure, I sent it out to get back at Umbridge, and because I knew it'd annoy Snape if he ever found out I was trying to make myself more famous, and because if they actually got popular maybe I could get around Fudge pretending Voldemort's not really back by publishing what really happened. But now _I'm_ annoyed. They can't not let me publish books about _me!_ "

"Nah, that's not on. What I reckon you need to do, then, is stop writing about what _actually_ happened. Make stuff up like the other writers do. Do, I dunno, a story about how you beat a basilisk with the Sword of Gryffindor, only you were nine and your pet Crup found it, or something like that."

"Yeah. But."

"Harry, they don't want a book about what really happened. Right?" Ron poked Hermione in the shoulder. "Right?"

"Hmm? Oh." Hermione glanced up from the letter. "It says here that your manuscript had a lot of little details that seemed like they might be foreshadowing or hooks for future action, but none of them ever panned out. Which makes sense - real life doesn't usually work that way. And they also said that, while they thought setting it at Hogwarts was an interesting innovation in the genre, there might be legal problems since your other characters were named after real people who weren't celebrities. I cannot believe I'm saying this about someone who's referring to children's adventure novels about a fictionalised version of you as a _genre_ , but they're not wrong. It's not as though you went and asked anyone you mentioned if they were happy to have their names in print. Can you imagine what Snape would do? We - well, you - thought he was evil for a _lot_ of first year!"

"It's not like he'd know it was me! And anyway, Rita Skeeter does it."

"Rita Skeeter has the Prophet behind her," Hermione pointed out. "Which has the Ministry behind it, or whoever it's allowing to bribe it this week. _You_ have the Prophet and the Ministry slandering you, and you don't have a lawyer or any idea how the magical legal system works - which, now that I think about it, is really something I ought to research at some point..."

Harry sighed deeply, and Ron punched him gently in the shoulder.

"Mate, as much as I want you to write me into your book beating Malfoy in a duel or something, it's not worth dealing with his dad when he finds out someone's written a book where he looks like an idiot all the time. Just come up with some other blond ferrety arse who thinks You-Know-Who's the best thing since self-scrubbing cauldrons. Anyone who's met him'll know who he's supposed to be, but he won't actually be able to do anything 'cause it's not his name, right?"

"Depending on how the law works, possibly wrong," Hermione said absently, scribbling something in the margins of the letter. "But it's certainly cause a lot less problems than _openly_ writing him into your book."

"Yeah, but even if I scrap all that - which took work! Actual work! - and start over, they still think I'm writing myself wrong."

"You could tell them it's you," Ron said. "Then they'd know how wrong they were."

Hermione sighed. "The problem here isn't that they don't know what you're really like: it's that back when this industry - ugh - started, _nobody_ did, so they came up with their own ideas. Am I right in guessing that this started fairly soon after the end of the last war, Ron?"

"Probably? It's not like I was reading back then."

"Right. So they came up with some sort of heroic archetype - I suppose they must have known you wouldn't actually grow up into that person, but I doubt that was the point anyway. The heroes of children's books are usually idealised anyway. So they made up a Harry Potter who was... I don't know, I haven't read them, but probably exaggeratedly good and kind."

"Yeah, nobody ever wrote him with a temper," Ron said. "Even when he probably should've lost it. He'd be fighting some Dark Lord or other, get called names or his friends insulted or whatever, and he'd still be cheerful right up until the smiting bit! Though I guess that might've just been that series - they weren't all that bad. I think Ginny mostly liked that one because the pictures were actually pretty good. Some of them were just absolute rubbish - even I could tell they'd just put your name on because they knew nobody'd buy it otherwise."

"The point is," Hermione said, "they don't care what _you're_ like. They care that the Harry Potter you wrote wasn't like the one they collectively imagined. As long as you keep trying to write yourself into the story, they'll keep rejecting it because you aren't the same as their archetype."

"That's just... stupid," Harry said, grimacing.

"So's Umbridge, but we've still got to deal with her," Ron said. "Actually - Hermione, why've you been going along with all this? Shouldn't you be here telling Harry he shouldn't try to write a book right now because he needs to study, otherwise he'll fail his OWLs and have to leave Hogwarts and everything'll be horrible forever?"

"Well, yes, I would prefer he spent a bit more time studying," Hermione said. "But Muggle schools have found students tend to score better when they're also taking classes in the arts - which Hogwarts doesn't have. I'm not sure this is exactly what they were thinking, and picking it up in our OWLs year isn't the best idea, but it's certainly more productive than sitting around playing Exploding Snap."

Ron narrowed his eyes. "Are you just ignoring the bit where he's too stubborn to give something like this up and it'd be a waste of time arguing about it?"

"Well, I need time to study too, don't I?" She grinned at him. "And I _am_ looking forward to seeing what Harry ends up creating. In the horrified sort of way people feel watching a Quidditch pileup."

"Hey!" Harry said indignantly.

"So," she said, poking him in the shoulder, "are you going to rewrite it or not?"

He sighed. "I don't know. I mean, I _do_ want to do it, but it's just so much _work_. And... ugh."

"What?"

"If I rewrite the whole thing with different people, I'd have to come up with _names_."

"Okay?" Ron said. "Is that... bad?"

"Yes! Names are terrible! Do you have any idea how long it took to come up with the one I put on the manuscript?"

Hermione's eyes flicked down the letter. "This is addressed to Harold Evans. That's not terribly pseudonymous, Harry."

"Yeah, well, it was a coin toss between that and Nebuchadnezzar Jones, in the end."

"Coming up with names can't really be that hard," Ron said. "You just find a history book, and pick a bunch of names you like, and then mix them up a bit so it's not that obvious. Or a list of birth announcements out of the Prophet'd do it, too. Right?"

Hermione, who was mouthing _Nebuchadnezzar_ with a horrified expression on her face, didn't answer.

"It took _ages_ , Ron. Because it can't just be any name! It has to be the _right_ one! And it'd be so much worse with more characters. More names! And I couldn't just write about, ugh, James Thomas the nasty Potions professor who's tall and dark and likes wearing black, everyone'd know I meant Snape really. I'd have to actually come up with a _new_ Potions professor, and... ugh."

"So don't do Hogwarts, then," Ron said, shrugging. "Do before then, so there's less people, and then it's easy - all those books are the same, really. There's a bad guy somewhere - not Britain, I reckon because nobody wanted to read about a Dark Lord here again - and Harry has to go fight him, one of his friends has a problem he has to fix too, maybe he has to do something questy to beat the Dark Lord, then there's a new spell or a magic weapon or he just has some special power that just showed up, and boom! Day saved, he goes home, sometimes they shove a moral in too. Easy."

"Definitely not easy," Harry said.

"We'll get help, then," Ron said firmly. "I bet Ginny's still got all her books, and I know she'd lend them to us if I said why we needed them. We can nick bits out of them to make it easier."

"That's plagiarism," Hermione pointed out.

"So? Writing books about people without asking's got to be some kind of illegal, right?"

"That doesn't actually -"

"And we won't really plagiarise. Just get inspiration. That's got to be all right, or we'd never be allowed to read those journal articles they've got in the library in case we plagiarised them, right?"

"Have you _ever_ read any of those, Ronald?" Hermione asked, eyes narrowed.

"Well. No. But I could if I wanted to. I just don't. They're there for people like you who'd actually appreciate them, right?"

"Oh, _honestly_ -"

"Ginny!" Ron called, a note of relief in his voice. "Over here!"

She shoved the portrait shut behind her and strode over. "What's going on? And... Harry, are you all right?"

"I'm fine."

"Doesn't your back hurt sitting like that?"

"Ignore him," Ron said. "Listen. He's writing - remember those books you used to read, the ones about him being a kid and having adventures? One of those. We need inspiration."

Ginny blinked. "You're writing a Potter Adventure story?"

"I cannot _believe_ this is a _genre_ ," Hermione muttered.

"D'you have any of your old books?" Ron asked.

"Not here. It's not like I read them any more, Ron! But I could get Mum to send some of them over with Errol, and I bet there's someone here who's got copies too, maybe of ones I never owned. Enough people grew up reading them, right?"

"Yeah, probably. But why'd we say we wanted them?"

She shrugged. "Tell them Harry's just found out they exist and he wants to know what people think he was doing when he was a kid? Or come up with some reason to confiscate them - you're a Prefect, Ron! - or just tell them what's happening. I mean, the more people you get involved in this, the less work, right?"

Harry turned to look at her slowly, eyes narrowed. "Ginny, are you saying you think we should recruit _other_ people to help write my book?"

"Would it still be _your_ book if you did that? But, honestly, why not? Umbridge is making this place miserable. Getting some people together and writing a stupid kids' book seems like it'd make this year a lot more fun."

"Until Umbridge found out, at which point I suppose she'd ban it," Hermione said.

"Honestly, that's almost as good," Ginny said, a distant look on her face. "If she knew we were doing _something_ , but not what, she'd probably think it was something horrible and rebellious. Right? Can you imagine her getting all paranoid over whatever stupid idea she came up with, but actually all we were doing was writing a joke book about Harry's fake childhood? Can you imagine if she _found out?_ And she'd thought all that time we were fomenting rebellion or... whatever it is she thinks we're doing, honestly, this is ridiculous -"

"Being teenagers," Hermione suggested.

"Probably, ugh. Anyway - can you _imagine?_ "

"Yes," Ron said. "Harry, we need to do this."

"There wouldn't be that many people interested in helping me write a book, though, would there?" Harry said.

Ginny shook her head slowly. "Give me a day to organise things, Harry. You won't know what's hit you."

_Harry Potter and the Toad Curse_

Nebuchadnezzar Jones, Cruptail Press, 1G 11S

Review by Amelia Snapshort

An exciting new entry into the Potter Adventure genre, _HPTC_ immediately impresses by starting in a setting rarely found in children's fiction: the Muggle world. Harry, a lonely boy who's grown up under the care of a Squib friend of his parents', accidentally reveals his magic to a Muggle neighbour, Emilia, who turns out to have magic of her own. The two children swear friendship, overjoyed to finally have someone who understands them, but before long tragedy strikes: Harry's guardian opens a cursed letter that puts her into an enchanted sleep. They decide to try to make their way to the magical world to find a cure. Along the way they find another companion, a pureblood named Donald, as well as familiars galore, furtive Death Eaters, and of course the titular Toad.

Jones writes about the Muggle world with the easy familiarity of one who grew up there, and captures his characters' sense of wonder at the magical world with equal ease; parents who wish to introduce their children to the Muggle world could do much worse than give them _HPTC_ to read. The action scenes are gripping and fast-paced, a standout in a genre that tends to take its action softly for fear of alienating younger readers, though the writing is clumsy at times. Probably the book's biggest fault is its characterisation of Potter: he lacks the confidence usually seen in Potter books and has an unusually short temper. Still, these are small criticisms for a debut author. I, for one, look forward to seeing Jones' next entry in the series!

Next week: the Potter Adventure renaissance continues! We review _The Potter Diaries_ , by long-time favourite Archaea Smythweck; _Harry Potter and the Slytherin Sorting_ , by newcomer Scorpius Barkington; and _Harry Potter's Quidditch Adventures_ , by Frangelina Keorge. Also: just where is this new upsurge in Potter-related fiction coming from? Our Publishing Phenomena column discusses!


	2. aftermaths, or: if your problems haven't multiplied exponentially, then the solution was wrong

The last thing Harry had expected, nine days after Educational Decree 24a ("The definition of 'Student Organisations' is hereby expanded to include groups formed for the purpose of writing fiction..."), was to be approached by a determined-looking Pansy Parkinson.

"What do you want?"

"To talk to you. No, not here, Potter - come on." She ducked into an empty classroom, settling herself on a dusty chair, and wrinkled her nose. "Are you bleeding?"

"Detention," he said, pushing the door closed behind him. He didn't sit. Whatever this turned out to be, he was sure he wouldn't want to be involved.

"Oh, ugh. Here." She levitated a tiny bottle over to him. "Stop glaring at it like that, Potter. I'm hardly stupid enough to poison you. Call it a gesture of good faith, if you like - it'll bring the scarring down."

"Don't tell me she gave _you_ detention." He uncorked the bottle and relaxed as the scent of murtlap essence floated out.

"No, not me," she said sourly. "Tracey Davis. And a few of the younger kids."

Harry blinked. "Who?"

Parkinson glared at him. "She's in our year! Don't tell me you're _that_ oblivious."

"I mostly pay attention to the Slytherins who're actually trying to hurt me."

She grimaced. "Fair point. She's the only Slytherin halfblood in our year, and so are all the other Slytherins Umbridge targeted. It's not that much of a surprise, really - she's smart enough to realise she wouldn't survive if she hurt someone with a powerful family, like Draco, and that most of the rest of us wouldn't hesitate to call in any favours we're owed to get her out. She wouldn't want to risk getting her little power trip called off early, after all. I suppose you Gryffindors are, what, grinning and bearing it? Stoic to the end?"

Harry scowled at her. "What d'you think would happen if I complained to the Prophet right now?"

"Oh, they'd start calling you crazy again, obviously. But there must be _someone_ in Gryffindor who has a powerful relative or two... I'm getting off-topic, though. Potter, I'm here on behalf of Slytherin House to negotiate an agreement to oust Umbridge, ideally in the most embarrassing way possible."

"What?"

"Do you need me to repeat myself?"

"No, I - isn't she on _your_ side?"

She sighed. "By _your side_ , I presume you mean that she thinks purebloods ought to be in charge? I suppose. She seems more interested in the Ministry, frankly. But... well. Let me lay it out for you. I, and many of my housemates, do think that the dilution of magical culture by ignorant muggleborns is a problem, but having Umbridge here is a much more _immediate_ problem. I'd replace all my robes with those horrible blue pants if I thought it'd get her out."

"Um. Okay."

"I won't make a judgement one way or the other on the Dark Lord's alleged return," she went on. "But if it's true, then the Ministry delaying preparations is going to make everything much worse, which doesn't sound like a situation any of us want to be in; and if it's false, then they ought to be getting you to a qualified Mind Healer, not mocking you in the Prophet."

"Thanks?"

She waved a hand. "Don't mention it. No, really, I'm sure we don't want any of this to get out to Umbridge."

"Hang on," Harry said, frowning, as something occurred to him. " _All_ of Slytherin knows you're here?"

"Oh, yes. Well, I don't think Draco was listening - he was writing a very angry letter to his father at the time - but he'll come around once he realises his father isn't going to do anything that might get Umbridge back into the Ministry, not when he gets a much more uninterrupted line to Fudge when she's gone."

"Malfoy's upset about Umbridge? What?"

She cast him a weary glance. "Potter. Don't tell me you didn't know he was the main force behind _Harry Potter and the Slytherin Sorting_. He's _furious_."

Harry sank slowly onto a chair, rubbing his face. "Why is my life like this?"

"I've been asking that for a long, long time, Potter."


End file.
